


Sleep Patterns

by telperion_15



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Friendship, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-10
Updated: 2010-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-11 00:57:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/106513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telperion_15/pseuds/telperion_15
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sleep patterns aren't something that seem to mean a lot to Sherlock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleep Patterns

Sleep patterns aren’t something that seem to mean a lot to Sherlock. Yes, he sleeps, but it’s beyond John to find any kind of pattern in his periods of wakefulness and slumber. (Of course, Sherlock would say it’s beyond John to find any kind of pattern in anything much, but that’s beside the point.)

While there was that one instance when Sherlock actually went to bed at 11pm and got up at 7am (in the interests of establishing whether the requisite eight hours was enough to stop a person relinquishing their grip on their sanity and murdering their wife, he claimed), John’s far more used to surfacing from some mostly-forgotten dream at four in the morning to hear Sherlock still pacing around downstairs, or returning from the supermarket at midday to find his flatmate sprawled in an armchair, head tilted to one side as he dozes (and snores a little, but John’s saving that revelation up for a day when Sherlock _particularly_ deserves it).

And then there are the times when Sherlock’s so caught up in something – a case, an experiment, a thought process – that he’ll be up for twenty-four, forty-eight, seventy-two – or even, worryingly to a doctor like John (and he definitely suspects chemical assistance on that occasion), ninety-six – hours straight before crashing. Spectacularly.

Then he sleeps the sleep of the dead, which nothing short of Lestrade getting down on bended knee and begging him for his help with the most _fiendishly_ difficult of cases can rouse him from.

He even looks dead, with his pale, pale skin, and his slender, angular frame stretched out in the straightest of lines as he lies on the sofa, or in bed (John’s only witnessed that once – normally he doesn’t venture into Sherlock’s bedroom, but that time a quest to discover the whereabouts of his mobile phone forced him to brave it. It wasn’t as bad as he was expecting. Messy – but isn’t the whole flat? – but not the terrifying lair he’d been half anticipating. The mobile phone was in pieces, though. Irreparable pieces.).

But at the same time he looks kind of peaceful. Sherlock is a bundle of energy most of the time, and even when he’s sitting still – at his desk, in the armchair, in the back of a cab – the energy is still there, pent up and waiting to be let out. John can almost see Sherlock’s brain whizzing and fizzing and jumping even when his face is perfectly immobile, propped up on those steepled, elegant fingers.

When he’s sleeping, though – that deep sleep of the utterly exhausted – John thinks that that must be the only time that Sherlock’s brain actually _stops_. That it’s the only time Sherlock ever gets any actual _rest_.

Which is why he’s reluctant to wake the other man right now. Lestrade has come visiting, and if the Detective Inspector isn’t quite on bended knee, he definitely looks desperate. Apparently someone’s been threatening the Home Secretary and the police are stumped.

“Can’t it wait?” John hisses, trying to stay quiet.

“No,” Lestrade replies flatly, his expression saying he wishes they didn’t have to wake Sherlock either, although John suspects his reasons are different. “It can’t.”

“Fine.” John crosses to the sofa and then hesitates, wondering about the best way to do this. He’s not sure that a suddenly awakened Sherlock Holmes won’t be startled enough to try and kill him – or at least injure him badly – before he’s really registered what’s going on.

Eventually he settles for the standard ‘shaking the shoulder’ gently, bracing himself in case Sherlock should take any kind of violent exception.

But all that happens is that Sherlock’s eyes suddenly open, with no warning, no surprise and no ceremony, and he stares up at John, steadily, intensely, and rather disconcertingly, for about ten seconds, before levering himself upright, swinging his feet to the floor, and starting to talk to Lestrade in a perfectly normal voice, as if he’d just been resting his eyes for a moment, and not sleeping the kind of sleep that almost looks terminal.

John steps back, confused for a moment. He thinks he might have missed something. And while this is not an abnormal occurrence around Sherlock Holmes – John misses about a thousand things a day as far as the detective is concerned – he senses that this might have been something _important_.

There’s no time to ask about it, or puzzle it out, however, as Sherlock has sprung off the sofa and is putting on his coat and scarf and gloves. Lestrade looks reluctantly relieved, and John suddenly knows that they are about to pay a visit to the Home Secretary.

The puzzle will have to wait.

*~*~*~*~*

Later, much later, after it’s been established that the threat to the Home Secretary’s life wasn’t so much a _threat_ as the impotent rage of a disgruntled taxpayer with nothing better to do than cut letters out of newspapers and make them spell out new and angry words, and with no access to guns or bombs or weapons of any kind, and after Sherlock’s heaped withering scorn on Lestrade, Scotland Yard, and the entire Metropolitan Police Force in general for wasting his time, the subject is suddenly revisited.

“I was having a dream,” Sherlock says.

John looks round from where he’s once again unsuccessfully trying to write his blog. “I beg your pardon?”

“Before,” Sherlock explains, although John can’t help but notice that the customary expression of annoyance at _having_ to explain himself is absent for once. “When you woke me up. I was having a dream.”

“Oh.” So apparently Sherlock’s brain doesn’t _completely_ shut down when he’s sleeping, and that thought saddens John for reasons he’s not quite willing to examine. “What was it about?” John asks carefully, because why else would Sherlock bring it up if he didn’t want to be asked?

“It was about you, John.”

“About me?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” says John again. “And what was I doing in this dream?” he enquires, still careful.

“I can’t remember.” And _there’s_ the familiar frustration – Sherlock doesn’t like not being able to remember things.

“Okay…” John’s not quite sure where this is going, but he can sense that Sherlock is working up to something.

“But you were definitely there,” Sherlock confirms. “And I remember that your presence was very important. In the dream,” he adds quickly.

But the clarification rings hollow, and suddenly John gets it. “Oh. Oh, I _see_.”

Sherlock looks embarrassed now, and John knows he’s seconds away from a lecture on how actually it doesn’t matter after all, and how dreams are just the random products of the sleeping mind, and people who set any store by them are wishy-washy lunatics who can’t bear the idea that they might have to move through life without receiving some kind of mystical guidance while they’re asleep to make things easier for them.

John can hear it all as clearly as if Sherlock’s already speaking. But he doesn’t give Sherlock the chance to speak.

“I can’t pretend to have been dreaming about you,” he says slowly, and tries not to smile at the way Sherlock’s brow involuntarily crinkles at the idea that he’s not filling John’s every waking _and_ sleeping thought. “But I think I should probably tell you that, against all reason and sanity and common sense, your presence is very important too. To _me_,” he emphasises.

“Ah.” Sherlock looks faintly nonplussed for a moment, but _only_ for a moment. “Well, good. Of course, it would be.”

He stands, and makes a show of looking at the clock on the wall. “It’s late. I think I shall go to bed now.”

John shuts down his laptop, and stands too.

*~*~*~*~*

Sherlock’s sleep patterns haven’t got any better. He’s still awake when he should be asleep, and asleep when he should be awake, but John’s learned not to worry about it so much.

He still gets woken up at 4am sometimes, and more often than not finds the pillow beside him cold and empty. But then he hears the footsteps downstairs, or the muffled cry of some sudden epiphany, and he smiles into the darkness. Sherlock will sleep when he needs to sleep, and there’s nothing John can do to change that.

But the next time Lestrade comes calling, John turns him away.

“He’s sleeping. Come back later.”


End file.
